20th Century Fox Film via Everett Collection
If you're anything like us, you can't resist the urge to watch Titanic (or, at least, part of it) every time you see it on TV. You may know every word spoken, but do you know which lines were ad-libbed and which are actual quotes from survivors of the wreck? Here are 25 things you never knew:
1. The movie features 2 hours and 40 minutes of scenes set in 1912. This is the exact amount of time the Titanic took to sink.
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The film also has 37 seconds between the iceberg warning and the actual collision, which is the same amount of time that transpired in real life.
2. Matthew McConaughey, Chris O'Donnell, Billy Crudup, and Stephen Dorff were considered for the role of Jack Dawson.
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But thankfully, the part went to Leonardo DiCaprio, cementing him as a superstar (and an eternal heartthrob).
3. It was the first movie to receive two Academy Award nominations for the same character.
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Both Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were nominated (Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively) for playing the role of Rose. The next time two actors were nominated for playing the same role was 2001's Iris, also starring Winslet.
4. Gloria Stuart's nomination made her the oldest nominee in any category.
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She still holds the record for the feat. Stuart was 87 years old when she was nominated. This also makes her the only person involved in the film who was alive when the actual Titanic sank. Also, she gets that shout out as "the old lady" in Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did It Again," which is pretty much the highest honor anyone could ever hope to achieve.
5. Only the starboard half of the ship's set was completed.
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While at dock, painstaking post-production work was necessary to reverse the image in order to give an accurate portrayal of the boat docked at port (like it was in 1912). Costumes and signage needed to be reversed in order to perfect the illusion.
6. The ocean that the extras are jumping into is only 3 feet deep.
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The film contains 100 speaking parts and over 1,000 extras. They all needed to be dressed in lavish costumes...which would then be drenched in water for most of the film.
7. "I'm king of the world!" wasn't actually in the script.
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The line was ad-libbed by DiCaprio. It's ranked as AFI's 100th (of 100) greatest movie quotes of all time.
8. And Jack's ice-fishing story is a Titanic survivor's quote about the North Atlantic water.
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He was dissuading Rose not to jump off the back of the boat, in the scene where they meet.
9. James Cameron reportedly spoke to over 150 extras, providing them with names and personal histories of actual Titanic passengers.
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The 150 core extras took a 3-hour course to learn proper 1912 behavior from the film's choreographer, Lynne Hockney, who also produced a time traveler's guide that played on a never-ending loop in the wardrobe department. We bet Rose's unladylike gesture was not in the guide.
10. The old couple holding each other in bed as the ship sinks are based on a real couple.
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Ida &amp; Isidor Straus, owners of Macy's in New York, died aboard the Titanic. Ida was reportedly offered a seat, but refused it in order to stay with her husband. Her husband was then offered a seat to accompany his wife, but he refused it to save the lives of younger women and children. Ida is quoted as saying, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go" (this is also reported, "As we have live, so we will die, together"). The couple was last seen on deck, arm in arm. Aka, the love story the Titanic should have been about.
11. Benjamin Guggenheim really did get dressed in his best to die like a gentleman.
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He and his valet were last seen in the area of the Grand Staircase, sipping brandy and smoking cigars. They went down with the ship.
12. Kathy Bates wasn't the first choice to play "Unsinkable" Molly Brown.
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Reba McEntire was initially offered and had accepted the role until scheduling conflicts prevented it. Barbra Streisand was also allegedly considered for the part. We're glad Kathy Bates had the chance to own this (as usual). Margaret Brown was a real-life passenger aboard the Titanic who helped others onto lifeboats and even grabbed an oar on her own in an effort to go back and save more people.
13. Kate Winslet flashed Leonardo DiCaprio when they first met.
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She found out she'd have to be naked in front of him for filming and wanted to break the ice.
14. That's not Leonardo DiCaprio's hand drawing Rose.
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They're actually writer/director/producer/editor James Cameron's. Cameron had to mirror-image his hands in post-production to make his left-handed sketching fit with Jack Dawson's right-handedness.
15. Someone mixed PCP (aka angel dust) into the chowder served to the cast and crew at the end of shooting.
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No culprits were ever apprehended, but reportedly 80 people were taken ill and 50 more were hospitalized.
16. Originally, Rose was supposed to be tightening her mother's corset.
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Cameron and the actresses decided to rethink the positions to really clearly convey their relationship. You know, that Rose's mother was literally suffocating her.
17. Neil deGrasse Tyson convinced James Cameron to change the stars in the sky.
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The Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium noticed that the stars bore no resemblance to what the night sky would have actually looked like during that time and in that location. After discussing the issue several times with Cameron (by sending letters and harassing in person), he provided an image of what the sky should look like, which was used for the re-release. You can hear "Coolest Scientist's Rant" on Titanic here.
18. Kate Winslet was one of the only actors who didn't wear a wetsuit.
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She ended up getting pneumonia and almost quitting as a result.
19. The bow section wouldn't sink fast enough, so Cameron sunk it entirely and raised it from the depths of the water and filmed its re-submersion.
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After the ship breaks in half, the bow (which should go down pretty quickly) wasn't sinking fast enough because of its buoyancy and the narrow clearance between it and the tank. Once Cameron suggested to let it sink, the air space between decks flooded with water, allowing them to film it raised from the water, so it would sink quickly before the water drained out.
20. James Cameron re-shot the scenes with water bursting down the corridors because he didn't think the original 40,000 was enough.
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He asked for triple the amount of water. The set had to be rebuilt entirely to endure the added pressure.
21. Kate Winslet's dress was designed to look as good wet as it did dry.
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Costume designer Deborah Lynn Scott had 24 of the chiffon dresses made in order to endure all the strain of filming submerged in water.
22. Rose's gasp as she enters the water to save Jack is Kate Winslet's real reaction to the frigid water.
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Though the scene was filmed in the Pacific Ocean at the Baja California, Mexico set, the water was still cold enough to imagine those North Atlantic temperatures.
23. James Cameron credits Kate Winslet with the idea of spitting in Cal's face.
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The script originally had Rose jabbing him with a hairpin, but Winslet suggested she spit in his face instead. Cameron agreed, and the only person not informed was Billy Zane (Cal); his reaction was genuine. Cameron also credits Winslet for the "This is where we first met" line.
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24. The scenes after the ship sank were filmed in a 350,000 gallon tank.
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Frozen corpses and icy effects were given to the actors by applying a powder that crystallized upon contact with water and wax on the clothes and hair for a wet look.
25. James Cameron admitted on MythBusters that there was totally enough room for Jack and Rose to both float safely.
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"If Jack lives, the movie makes a tenth as much." So, like, she never had to let go in the first place...

DreamWorks
For the bulk of every Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, moose and squirrel would engage in high concept escapades that satirized geopolitics, contemporary cinema, and the very fabrics of the human condition. With all of that to work with, there's no excuse for why the pair and their Soviet nemeses haven't gotten a decent movie adaptation. But the ingenious Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman are another story, intercut between Rocky and Bullwinkle segments to teach kids brief history lessons and toss in a nearly lethal dose of puns. Their stories and relationship were much simpler, which means that bringing their shtick to the big screen would entail a lot more invention — always risky when you're dealing with precious material.
For the most part, Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman handles the regeneration of its heroes aptly, allowing for emotionally substance in their unique father-son relationship and all the difficulties inherent therein. The story is no subtle metaphor for the difficulties surrounding gay adoption, with society decreeing that a dog, no matter how hyper-intelligent, cannot be a suitable father. The central plot has Peabody hosting a party for a disapproving child services agent and the parents of a young girl with whom 7-year-old Sherman had a schoolyard spat, all in order to prove himself a suitable dad. Of course, the WABAC comes into play when the tots take it for a spin, forcing Peabody to rush to their rescue.
Getting down to personals, we also see the left brain-heavy Peabody struggle with being father Sherman deserves. The bulk of the emotional marks are hit as we learn just how much Peabody cares for Sherman, and just how hard it has been to accept that his only family is growing up and changing.
DreamWorks
But more successful than the new is the film's handling of the old — the material that Peabody and Sherman purists will adore. They travel back in time via the WABAC Machine to Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, and the Trojan War, and 18th Century France, explaining the cultural backdrop and historical significance of the settings and characters they happen upon, all with that irreverent (but no longer racist) flare that the old cartoons enjoyed. And oh... the puns.
Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman is a f**king treasure trove of some of the most amazingly bad puns in recent cinema. This effort alone will leave you in awe.
The film does unravel in its final act, bringing the science-fiction of time travel a little too close to the forefront and dropping the ball on a good deal of its emotional groundwork. What seemed to be substantial building blocks do not pay off in the way we might, as scholars of animated family cinema, have anticipated, leaving the movie with an unfinished feeling.
But all in all, it's a bright, compassionate, reasonably educational, and occasionally funny if not altogether worthy tribute to an old favorite. And since we don't have our own WABAC machine to return to a time of regularly scheduled Peabody and Sherman cartoons, this will do okay for now.
If nothing else, it's worth your time for the puns.
3/5
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Lions Gate via Everett Collection
When we last left our heroes, they had conquered all opponents in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, returned home to their newly refurbished living quarters in District 12, and fallen haplessly to the cannibalism of PTSD. And now we're back! Hitching our wagons once again to laconic Katniss Everdeen and her sweet-natured, just-for-the-camera boyfriend Peeta Mellark as they gear up for a second go at the Capitol's killing fields.
But hold your horses — there's a good hour and a half before we step back into the arena. However, the time spent with Katniss and Peeta before the announcement that they'll be competing again for the ceremonial Quarter Quell does not drag. In fact, it's got some of the film franchise's most interesting commentary about celebrity, reality television, and the media so far, well outweighing the merit of The Hunger Games' satire on the subject matter by having Katniss struggle with her responsibilities as Panem's idol. Does she abide by the command of status quo, delighting in the public's applause for her and keeping them complacently saturated with her smiles and curtsies? Or does Katniss hold three fingers high in opposition to the machine into which she has been thrown? It's a quarrel that the real Jennifer Lawrence would handle with a castigation of the media and a joke about sandwiches, or something... but her stakes are, admittedly, much lower. Harvey Weinstein isn't threatening to kill her secret boyfriend.
Through this chapter, Katniss also grapples with a more personal warfare: her devotion to Gale (despite her inability to commit to the idea of love) and her family, her complicated, moralistic affection for Peeta, her remorse over losing Rue, and her agonizing desire to flee the eye of the public and the Capitol. Oftentimes, Katniss' depression and guilty conscience transcends the bounds of sappy. Her soap opera scenes with a soot-covered Gale really push the limits, saved if only by the undeniable grace and charisma of star Lawrence at every step along the way of this film. So it's sappy, but never too sappy.
In fact, Catching Fire is a masterpiece of pushing limits as far as they'll extend before the point of diminishing returns. Director Francis Lawrence maintains an ambiance that lends to emotional investment but never imposes too much realism as to drip into territories of grit. All of Catching Fire lives in a dreamlike state, a stark contrast to Hunger Games' guttural, grimacing quality that robbed it of the life force Suzanne Collins pumped into her first novel.
Once we get to the thunderdome, our engines are effectively revved for the "fun part." Katniss, Peeta, and their array of allies and enemies traverse a nightmare course that seems perfectly suited for a videogame spin-off. At this point, we've spent just enough time with the secondary characters to grow a bit fond of them — deliberately obnoxious Finnick, jarringly provocative Johanna, offbeat geeks Beedee and Wiress — but not quite enough to dissolve the mystery surrounding any of them or their true intentions (which become more and more enigmatic as the film progresses). We only need adhere to Katniss and Peeta once tossed in the pit of doom that is the 75th Hunger Games arena, but finding real characters in the other tributes makes for a far more fun round of extreme manhunt.
But Catching Fire doesn't vie for anything particularly grand. It entertains and engages, having fun with and anchoring weight to its characters and circumstances, but stays within the expected confines of what a Hunger Games movie can be. It's a good one, but without shooting for succinctly interesting or surprising work with Katniss and her relationships or taking a stab at anything but the obvious in terms of sending up the militant tyrannical autocracy, it never even closes in on the possibility of being a great one.
3.5/5
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After Dark Films
It seems a bit odd to take on a movie review of Courtney Solomon's Getaway, as only in the loosest terms is Getaway actually a movie. We begin without questions — other than a vague and frustrating "What the hell is going on?" — and end without answers, watching Ethan Hawke drive his car into things (and people) for the hour and a half in between. We learn very little along the way, probed to engage in the mystery of the journey. But we don't, because there's no reason to.
There's not a single reason to wonder about any of the things that happen to Hawke's former racecar driver/reformed criminal — forced to carry out a series of felonious commands by a mysterious stranger who is holding his wife hostage — because there doesn't seem to be a single ounce of thought poured into him beyond what he see. We learn, via exposition delivered by him to gun-toting computer whiz Selena Gomez, that he "did some bad things" before meeting the love of his life and deciding to put that all behind him. Then, we stop learning. We stop thinking. We start crashing into police cars and Christmas trees and power plants.
Why is Selena Gomez along for the ride? Well, the beginnings of her involvement are defensible: Hawke is carrying out his slew of vehicular crimes in a stolen car. It's her car. And she's on a rampage to get it back. But unaware of what she's getting herself into, Gomez confronts an idling Hawke with a gun, is yanked into the automobile, and forced to sit shotgun while the rest of the driver's "assignments" are carried out. But her willingness to stick by Hawke after hearing his story is ludicrous. Their immediate bickering falls closer to catty sexual tension than it does to genuine derision and fear (you know, the sort of feelings you'd have for someone who held you up or forced you into accessorizing a buffet of life-threatening crimes).
After Dark Films
The "gradual" reversal of their relationship is treated like something we should root for. But with so little meat packed into either character, the interwoven scenes of Hawke and Gomez warming up to each other and becoming a team in the quest to save the former's wife serve more than anything else as a breather from all the grotesque, impatient, deliberately unappealing scenes of city wreckage.
And as far as consolidating the mystery, the film isn't interested in that either, as evidenced by its final moments. Instead of pressing focus on the answers to whatever questions we may have, the movie's ultimate reveal is so weak, unsubstantial, and entirely disconnected to the story entirely, that it seems almost offensive to whatever semblance of a film might exist here to go out on this note. Offensive to the idea of film and story in general, as a matter of fact. But Getaway isn't concerned with these notions. Not with story, character, logic, or humanity. It just wants to show us a bunch of car crashes and explosions. So you'd think it might have at least made those look a little better.
1/5
More Reviews:'The Hunt' Is Frustrating and Fantastic'You're Next' Amuses and Occasionally Scares'Short Term 12' Is Real and Miraculous
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Billionare advertising mogul Charles Saatchi has confessed assault and accepted a "police caution" in regards to the photograph that surfaced of him viscously clenching the throat of his wife, British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. London's Evening Standard reported that Saatchi originally claimed that the infamous photo, which catches renowned art collector Saatchi aggressively choking his wife, exaggerated the couples feud. He also vowed that he and his Wife mitigated their fight soon enough and reconciled once they were home and out of the public eye.
Despite how the nasty snap framed the famous couple's argument, Saatchi relentlessly insisted that it was merely "a playful tiff." The loaded British husband continued to deny his role as an abuser stating "there was no grip." Yet, Nigella was spotted with tears dripping down her cheeks in the haze of their public quarrel, which occurred on June 9th at the swanky London-based Scott's Restaurant.
But now, Saatchi, whose famous advertising company assisted Margaret Thatcher's become prime minister, is finally coming clean– admitting that he did indeed abused his wife. Although it is terrible that Lawson was exposed to such severe maltreatment, her violent argument with her husband has sparked a more open conversation about domestic violence in the public sphere.
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Will history look back upon the past 60 years as the Second Elizabethan Age? Stephen Daldry’s production of The Audience answers with a Queen’s English-accented “yes.” The West End play that reunited Helen Mirren, in her Oscar-winning role as Elizabeth II, with the writer of The Queen, Peter Morgan, was finally available for New Yorkers to see when a live HD stream of the stage production screened as an exclusive engagement from National Theatre Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music June 15. Considering the abundance of exciting theater in New York it may seem hard to imagine how a projection of a filmed play onto a movie screen could be “an event.” Except that we still don’t know if The Audience will ever cross the Pond. If it does, only the royal yacht Brittania could possibly stow all the Tonys it will win.
The Queen lives a life of performance. Being Sovereign is a role she’s adopted in what may be the longest-recorded display of method acting in history, at least according to Morgan. The Audience takes us through all six decades of the Queen’s reign, with the 67-year-old Mirren equally at home playing 26, Elizabeth’s age upon assuming the throne, and 86. Mirren’s changes in posture and bearing — from ramrod and regal in 1952 to stooped in 2013 — along with some padding and five different wig changes, sell the effect. She hopscotches back and forth through time, with each scene taking the form of her weekly meeting with the Prime Minister, a conference at Buckingham Palace the PMs refer to as “The Audience.”
Morgan’s selective with his presentation of history, grouping scenes thematically, rather than chronologically, and focusing on only eight of the twelve PMs who’ve served since the Queen’s coronation. Nervous fussbudget John Major talks about using negotiating techniques he developed during peace talks in the Balkans to broker a truce between Diana and Charles, while Gordon Brown (played as an emotional wreck by former Inspector Lynley, Nathaniel Parker) vents about feeling overlooked by the Obama White House. The Queen finds an uncommon friendship in common man Harold Wilson, whose rough-and-tumble Labour views oddly intersect with her own, and tension, though not testiness, with Margaret Thatcher.
Mirren’s one scene with Haydn Gwynne as the Iron Lady is remarkable in its subtlety. A lesser playwright would have scripted a scenery-chewing showdown between the Queen and Thatcher. What’s conveyed instead is a strongly professional working relationship that could never become a true friendship. Morgan, Daldry, and Mirren aren’t interested in tabloid sensationalism — her children are barely mentioned aside from Major’s “peace talks” joke — but in revealing the Queen’s character and personality through a recurring ritual, and how her conducting of that ritual reveals the ways she’s changed over time. The maturation we see in the four years between when she first meets Churchill in 1952, when she’s still wearing her mourning black and emotionally fragile, and the strong leader who confronts Sir Anthony Eden over his hawkishness during the Suez Crisis is a beautiful ripening. It’s a prismatic view of a human life.
Artistic depictions of people in power often emphasize their “larger than life” status. But Morgan and Mirren show Queen Elizabeth as not so much a towering presence as a stabilizing force, symbolic of a continuity and grace that could never be found in party politics. “When you’ve been around for as long as I have,” Mirren’s Queen says in 2013, “The same ideas and people are bound to pop back up — just wearing a different tie.” People generally think that history repeating itself is a bad thing, a sign that we’re incapable of learning from the past. Watching The Audience, history repeating itself has never been more enlightening...or enjoyable.
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A song featuring a spoof scenario of late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher having sex at a Nazi-style rally has been re-released to coincide with the controversial former leader's death. Thatcher passed away on 8 April (13) at the age of 87 following at a stroke but her death has reignited ill feeling among some Brits about the divisive nature of her years in power.
Campaigners worked to get The Wizard of Oz track Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead to second place on the U.K. singles chart as a mark of protest on Sunday (14Apr13), and now it has emerged an anti-Thatcher song first recorded when she swept to power in 1979 has been re-released.
The dance track, titled I'm There!, features Thatcher impersonator Janet Brown making ecstatic moaning noises at London's Westminster Abbey during a Nazi-style rally. It featured on satirical album The Iron Lady, which has also been re-released online.
Dignitaries, politicians and royalty, including Queen Elizabeth II and current British Prime Minister David Cameron, gathered at London's St Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday (17Apr13) for Thatcher's ceremonial funeral.

Famous faces from the world of showbusiness mixed with royalty and politicians from across the world in London on Wednesday morning (17Apr13) at the ceremonial funeral of former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The veteran politician, who passed away on 8 April (13) at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, was remembered during a high-profile memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral in the British capital attended by Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as well as Britain's current Prime Minister David Cameron.
Star guests included Dame Shirley Bassey, actress Joan Collins, entertainer Michael Crawford, Welsh opera star Katherine Jenkins and theatre mogul Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Former U.K. Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Major turned out for the occasion, along with former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Before the service at the famed cathedral, Thatcher's coffin passed through the streets of London on a gun carriage with a full military procession.
Thousands of spectators gathered to watch, and more than 4,000 police officers were deployed as part of strict security measures amid the threat of protests over Thatcher's policies, which continue to divide opinion 23 years after she left office.
Demonstrations along the route of the funeral procession remained mostly peaceful, with campaigners booing and turning their backs on the coffin to show their opinion.
Singer Jenkins addressed the threat of protests in a post on her Twitter.com page before she arrived at the funeral, writing, "For me today is personal not political," while musician Billy Bragg urged campaigners to donate to a good cause instead of disrupting the service, adding, "If you wish to express your feelings about the divisive nature of the Thatcher legacy today, do something positive... Donthatedonate.com."

The Season 6 premiere of Mad Men starts with a nasty trick. The episode begins through the perspective of a man lying on the ground, looking up at the ceiling while someone beats on his chest. In the background you hear Megan, Don Draper's wife, screaming. We're so used to seeing this world through Don's perspective we think, "Oh, Don Draper had a heart attack." Immediately it flashes back to him and Megan on the beach in Hawaii and you think, "Oh, we're going to find out how Don ended up having a heart attack." But later in the episode we learn, well, it wasn't Don at all, it was his doorman, who he, Megan, and their cardiologist neighbor watched have the cardiac arrest. What a dirty, stinking trick.
It feels like a bait and switch: we're supposed to think that Don is in danger of dying when he's not in danger at all. But it isn't a trick. It is Don's perspective. In fact the whole episode, like so many in Mad Men history, is staring toward death — with Don gazing in that direction not only because of the ill doorman but also because he is, once again, searching for identity.
Last season we saw Don struggling against his natural impulses. After marrying Megan and chasing his happiness, he came clean with her about who he is and his dark past. He was trying to integrate Dick Whitman and Don Draper and become one fully-formed healthy individual. By the end of the season, when he walks away from Megan and was eyeing that other woman in a bar, he had clearly failed. This season seems like it is going to be about his relapse, about the cost of his failure or, even worse, his sinking into irrelevance.
This episode, however, was all about artifacts. We see each of the four major characters we follow in the premiere – Don, Roger, Betty, and Peggy – each dealing with their identity, who they are and what the world thinks of them, and what objects from other people, dead or alive, have left them.
Like Greg Brady with the bad luck Tiki god, Don Draper finds his artifact in Hawaii. The first sequence of the show is very odd, showing Don and Megan in paradise and he's enjoying himself, but totally silent, conspicuously so. It's like he can't speak when he isn't being his authentic self, when he's playing the role he thinks he's supposed to. This is the same Don Draper who left his daughter's birthday party to go sit and drink alone in his car.
RELATED: 'Mad Men' Goes to Hawaii for Season 6
The first time he speaks is to tell the soldier at the bar that he was in Korea, and to speak honestly about himself. When the drunk grunt asks Don to walk his soon-to-be wife down the aisle at his wedding, Don says, "You don't know me. One day you'll regret it." But the soldier says that one day he will be just like Don, a "veteran who can't sleep and talks to strangers." Though Don didn't start the conversation, what is his job other than "talking to strangers." Don puts aside his existential declaration that no one knows him (there is a lot of everyone not knowing anyone in this episode) and officiates his wedding, another moment of what seems like real joy, a moment of true love, even though Don rails later that the word is being overused and spent of its meaning.
Later, when he's back in his Manhattan apartment, when the slide of the ceremony comes up he can't talk about it to everyone else in the room. He is once again back to being inauthentic. (And, of course, notice the difference between Don's presentation with the carousel in this episode and his presentation with the carousel in Season 1.) Originally he was powerful and persuasive and using his own experience to win over the clients. Now he's entirely silent and no one wants to buy his experience.
Don's artifact, of course, is PFC Dinkins' lighter, which he and Don mistakenly switched at the bar. This time he has taken on another soldier's identity by accident, unlike the first time when Dick Whitman stole Don Draper's identity on purpose to achieve the American dream he always thought he was promised. Don thinks about taking on the soldier's identity, a soldier who is violent, impetuous, and stupid, all things that Don is not. He throws the lighter away, rejecting this new identity, but Megan brings it back to him. She proves that Don can't be his true self with her, she wants him to maintain an alter ego, whether it's Don Draper or this new PFC Dinkins, a man who gets sloppy drunk and asks inappropriate questions of strangers. Megan doesn't want the real thing, she wants a fake. Don eventually gives the lighter to his secretary and says to send it back, without a note. He wants to distance himself as far from this man as he can, no matter the joy he might have brought him on the beach. For Don it's more important to be honest and grow into himself again than take someone else's identity.
Don is also struggling with the inscription on the lighter. "In life we often have to do things that aren't our bag." Don's initial life with Betty were all things that weren't his bag – having the wife and kids and settling down in the suburbs. He rejected that motto to find happiness with Megan in the city and that wasn't his bag either. Don seems to have internalized this motto, but rails against it, selfishingly doing the things that are right for him even if they harm other people.
It seems like things at work aren't Don's bag these days anyway. He hates that the photographers are there to take everyone's pictures and they rearranged his office. He hates that he has to, once again, put on a facade for the public. The photographer tells Don to just be himself, but he can't. He no longer has any idea what his self is. He stands in his rearranged office thinking back on the waves of Hawaii as the snow falls, and you can't help but think of that falling man in the opening.
Later when presenting to the clients he gives them a presentation about a man who goes to Hawaii and is transformed, he just disappears into paradise (which seems to be Don's new fantasy about how to gain happiness). The client ask Don where the man went. "He jumped off," Don replies, once again recalling that falling man from the opening credits. Everyone thinks the guy killed himself, something Don didn't even realize he was telegraphing, something he might not have even considered as an option, until now. Is Don destined to be the one who falls off the top of the building, like people have always thought he is?
Things at the office aren't going well. Not only is there the strange interloper Bob Benson (who seems to be serving some dark force with a smile on his face), but Don no longer holds his sway with the clients. When they don't like his presentation, he gets forceful, explaining himself frantically, using his old penchant for getting aggressive to get results. But this time it doesn't work. He caves and tries to give them what they want; anything to prove he still has it, he's still a genius. Even that doesn't work. He has failed, and not only has he failed with his vision, he even failed with a compromised version of it. Don is struggling with everything, not only his sense of self, but his creative vision.
Don Draper, being Don Draper, is also having trouble at home. How do we know? Well, he doesn't care much about Megan or what she does or what she has to say. She's off having authentic experiences (working as an actress, going hunting for weed in Hawaii) while he's moping around with his white people problems wondering about what is going to happen to himself after he dies. Boo-hoo.
He's also sleeping with his neighbor's wife. We first meet Dr. Rosen in Don's elevator and it appears like they have a loose friendship. There's something about Rosen's skill as a doctor that intrigues Don, that he has somehow mastered death. It's like he has a real gift, a real profession, not just serving corporate shills by captivating the public's desires. Of course Rosen wants to be Don, a good-looking, confident man who can get anyone to do what he wants using the power of his persuasion. They both think the other has it all. Don offers the man a camera and, more importantly, his friendship, but the shock is that Don is sleeping with his wife all along.
Like always, Don's dalliances aren't about sex, they're about escape. They're about bucking against the norm and hoping that the feeling he creates through sex will somehow allieviate his anxiety about life. (Rosen even says, "People will do anything to alleviate their anxiety.") Yes, Don isn't sleeping with Rosen's wife because she's attractive (which she is) or he's in love with her, she has been reducted to an object of her own, another artifact. He's sleeping with her so that he can try to steal some of Rosen's magic and possibly inject it into his own life. He's fighting against being himself by trying consume another man's life yet again.
It's not working. He tells his new playmate, "I don't want to do this anymore," but he doesn't mean sleep with her, he doesn't even mean cheat on his wife in general, he means he doesn't want to have to deal with yet another existential crisis. He just wants an answer, he just wants any answer. Sadly, he's not going to find it from any of the other characters.
Roger's story, of course, is about death. Duh. It contains two dead people, him sitting in analysis mockingly pleading for his doctor to explain it all, and he's fretting that he thinks that life is just a meaningless series of experiences, doorways that are boring to open. Roger, like Don, has also fallen off the path to enlightenment. Last season he took LSD, divorced his wife, and was looking toward the future to try to find something worthwhile (Season 5 ended with us staring at his bare ass as he embraced the world). Either he's off that path or not finding it has put him right back where he was in the first place.
He's chasing after another comely brunette (who we don't get the pleasure to see) and pining after Joan. Maybe she's what will make him happy? It would have made the rest of us happy if we had seen a little bit more of her in the episode.
Anyway, Roger has two reilcs. The first is the water from the Jordan River his father brought back for his mother that was used to baptize almost everyone in the family. While freaking out at his mother's funeral (I would too if someone had barfed in the umbrella stand, but his outburst seemed a little over-blown), Roger makes the ultimate Freudian slip and says it's "my funeral." His ex-wife Mona comes upstairs and suggest maybe he would be more happy if he connected to the people who already love him rather than chasing after another one.
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That's when he goes downstairs to talk to Margaret. He brings up the family and presents her with this artifact, but all she wants her grandmother to leave her is money. Roger wants to talk about love and she only wants to talk about commerce. Already the water is losing its potency, Margaret didn't use it to baptize her son and, after her conversation about refrigerated trucks (not a bad investment at all!) she leaves it behind on the couch. She doesn't want a bit of the past, she doesn't want a bit of Roger, all that she wants is money and the future it can buy her.
Later Roger is looking for a shoe shine but his shoe shine man has died. His daughter sends along his shoe shine kit to Roger who takes it into his office and finally cries after feeling nothing about the death of his mother or Mona having found a new man in her life. This is what makes him cry. A shoe shine kit. Sometimes it feels good to let it all out, even if it's over some chemical soaked box.
The important thing about the artifacts in the episode is that they aren't good as objects, only instruments that people are willing to use. If, like the water and the shoe shine kit, they're not being used by someone then they're just so much junk, but, like Sandy's violin, when they're being used, they're the things that connect us all to each other.
Now Roger doesn't have any connection to anyone and it's starting to wear on him. He mentions being shipped out of Pearl Harbor (it's startling how three men in the premiere are all defined by their wars) but his cohort and his mother are dying off. Even the old ways are dying off. There's no one to know how to use a shoe shine kit and Roger is completely obsolete, left with nothing but some worthless junk, a bunch of stories no one wants to hear, and a room of women he's disappointed. He doesn't need analysis, he just needs something better to do.
As I said before, Betty's artifact is Sandy's violin, at least initially. Her relationship with Sandy is interesting in that everything that Betty says is defeated by her actions. Oh, our Betty, still a little bit fat (but she's "reducing!") and completely out of touch with herself. She is constantly defending her choice to stay at home and be the pretty wife and mother of increasingly ungrateful children, but that's what she never wanted at all and she has always fought against it. It's as if it's easier to propogate a myth than actually change.
That's why she's trying to find Sandy and why she holds onto Sandy's violin, since it is a symbol for the dream Sandy has for a better future. Anyway, Sandy says she wants to take off to New York and live an exciting life and Betty says that her life as a model in the Big Apple wasn't all that and she should wait until she's ready Later, when the hooligans at the St. Mark's flop house tell her that they "hate [her] life as much as [she] does," she fights against them. She tells that they are awful and she storms out, ripping her coat. Even being there she is changed, the fabric of her existence very literally sullied by her being in the tenement. (Anyway, they didn't hate her "goulash" all that much though.)
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But she leaves the violin there. Sandy is already a lost cause and Betty knows it. During her kitchen scene with Betty (which is about as touching as ice cold Betty ever gets) Sandy says, "It's amazing how quickly some people come up with lies." We all know that applies to Betty, but it applies to Sandy as well, who lied about Julliard and where she was going. She is going to turn out to be just like Betty, another girl disappointed by her options in life, someone who will defend her choices even as they make her miserable.
There is also something about Betty that wants to destroy Sandy. The younger generation is making the older characters increasingly nervous, but Betty seems to be the only one to wish harm on the younger children, when she makes that really inappropriate joke about Henry going to rape Sandy while she holds her down. That's the only thing that I can think of to explain her shockingly inappropriate comments, delivered with a smirk so small they seem to be entirely serious.
In the end though, Betty's real artifact is her hair. Like Don and Roger, this is something she is doing to try to be more authentic. This is, of course, a direct reaction to the hooligan calling her hair "bottled" when he reads her real color is brunette on her driver's license. She doesn't want to hide anymore. She wants to be the real Betty who may be a bit chunky and have brown hair, not the perfect Barbie doll everyone told her she had to be for Don (and look at how well that turned out anyway). Ironically, her new hair color is just as manufactured. She didn't let her roots grow out, she is just trying to cover up the new facade with the old one. Of course the kids hate it. The kids will always hate everything their parents do, especially when, like Bobby, he is faced with the reality behind the illusion that his mother has always sold to him. She is now "ugly," and he sees it for the first time.
Peggy, of course, is the exception that proves the rule. If we are looking at Don and how far he has fallen since the first episode, look at how much Peggy has risen. Her artifact is the lost footage that she found and, unlike everyone else, she can interact with that footage and use it to make beautiful music, as it were. She can shape it into something that is great, and that is what makes her different from the other three. This is Peggy's moment like Don's with the slide projector all those years ago. She is finally, truly ascendant.
And while she's is using strategies and tools that she learned from Don, she has also found her own strategies. Last season, when she went all Don Draper on the Heinz baked beans people and tried to force them to take her idea, she was shot down. Now, when the earphone people don't like her solutions to alter their aborted Super Bowl ad, she finds a way to get them to agree to let her do her job by being nice and courteous. While everyone still considers her part of a "frat," she has found a way to be both a woman and an executive at the same time, using a more subtle tactic that would have made a man look weak.
No, Peggy isn't far away from Don at all and she stays up late at night with Stan on the phone, still in close contact, letting him listen in on her big triumph. It's as if it doesn't really happen for her unless there is a way for it to get back to Don. And as much as she wasn't like Don with the client, she was just like him with her staff: stern and demanding but, at the end, giving them her sandwich and showing a bit of care. It was a classic Don Draper move.
But still, she isn't entirely confident with the power. Later, Ted, Peggy's boss, tells her that she has to tell the rest of her employees to go home. "They're not waiting for me?" she asks incredulously. Why would all these people be paying attention to her, trying to prove to her that she's a good worker when that's still all she wants is someone else's approval: Don's.
Peggy, unlike all these other people, is actually happy. Her sense of self-worth comes from her work and being great at her job. She doesn't see why these kids wouldn't want to be at work on New Year's Eve because that's just where she wants to be (I wouldn't want to be with her boyfriend Abe either, considering his vegetarian diet is giving him the trots).
Peggy is the younger generation that everyone is afraid of but, being part of the establishment, she is separate from it. When she hears about the Tonight Show stand-up act about the soldiers in Vietnam who cut the ears off their enemy, she blames the act for ruining her commercial. She doesn't blame the soldiers for doing something immoral and violent, she blames the "hippie" comic who brings it to the attention of the public. She is firmly on the side of "the man."
Though she may not be on the same page as her peers, she is the only one of the cast who is active and vital, the only person who is interacting with her object in a way that is bringing her happiness. That either makes her incredibly power or incredibly delusional, waiting for an awakening that may or may not happen. But one thing is for sure: Peggy is in control while everyone else is not.
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[Photo Credit: AMC]
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It’s a good thing Seth MacFarlane brought his A-Game Sunday night because the winners’ speeches certainly didn’t serve up much in the way of “memorable moments.” Sure, we liked Christopher Plummer saying that he hoped the nominated actresses in the Dolby Theatre “will appear in some of my next 30 movies.” And Daniel Day-Lewis revealing the bombshell that he was in the running to play Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady before that interloper Meryl Streep beat him for the part. But it was the Family Guy creator’s night — for better or worse. Here are Top 10 picks for his jokes that tickled our funny bones the most.
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10. "A lot of controversy about the use of the N-word in the film. I'm told the screenplay is based on Mel Gibson's voicemail."—Referring to Django Unchained.
9. “First time I saw him [Ben Affleck] with all that dark facial hair I thought, my god, the Kardashians have finally made the jump to film.”
8. "She [Jennifer Lawrence] told me whether she wins or loses, she told me it's just an honor that Meryl Streep wasn't nominated."
7. "This is a story about a man fighting to get back his woman who has been subjected to unspeakable violence. Or as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie." --Referring to Django Unchained
6. “It’s Sunday, everybody’s dressed up. This is like church, only with more people praying.”
5. “It'll be 16 years till she's too old for George Clooney.” –About 9-year-old Beasts of the Southern Wild Best Actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis.
4. "The quest to make Tommy Lee Jones laugh starts now."
3. "Tonight's ceremony is being watched by over a billion people worldwide. Which is why Jodie Foster will be up here later to ask for her privacy." –Referring to Foster’s Golden Globes speech.
2. “Daniel Day-Lewis got so into character [as Lincoln] that when he saw Don Cheadle he tried to free him.”
1. “I would argue that the actor that really got inside Lincoln’s head was John Wilkes Booth.”
Which joke was your favorite?
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
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